Year - New. Happy?

Peter
Buffett, son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett, is an Emmy
Award-winning composer, NY Times best-selling author and noted
philanthropist. Currently, he is releasing socially-conscious music and
touring his "Concert & Conversation" series in support of his bookLife Is What You Make It.

George Harrison may have said it best:"With every mistake we must surely be
learning."

It’s phrased in such a way that there’s hope and
questioning. It sure makes me question. We certainly learn from our mistakes on
a personal level. At least it’s a clear possibility if we choose to take
responsibility for the mistake.

But do we learn from our mistakes on a collective level?
Does the phrase “never again” really mean anything? I’m not sure we can make
collective change if we don’t see individual acts as reflections of the greater
whole. So when a person with an automatic weapon kills, or a group of men destroy a woman’s life
through rape and torture, we must know that these horrific acts do not happen
in a vacuum. They are stories within a story. Our story.

Let me see if this analogy makes sense: the sun's energy
unfiltered comes to the earth and allows life to take place. Through what
appears (to me) to be a miracle, plants can convert the sun's energy and the
nutrients of the earth and sky into fuel for life. You could say that plants
are the result of a conversation between the earth and the sun (actually,
somebody did say that and I forget who it was). But I digress.

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The point is, nothing in this equation is doing anything
other than fulfilling a purity of purpose.

Through focusing the sun's energy, other things can take
place. The first thing that came to me (I sort of hate to admit) is taking a
magnifying glass and watching something small go up in flames.

So here’s what I’m getting at: Maybe there’s a universal
force or consciousness. That’s what I’m guessing most people through the ages
have named as God, or love, or spirit, or Gaia. Maybe there’s a natural purity
of purpose in all things—a purpose that is life itself.

And when we hear about horrific acts of violence and
destruction, it’s like the magnifying glass burning an insect. Culture is the
magnifying glass that distorts and amplifies a particular quality of the sun
(energy as heat) and creates a very different outcome—death instead of life—but only because of an intermediary distortion.